We’ve all heard of growth hacking. And if you haven’t, growth hacking is a marketing strategy that focuses on rapid experimentation and testing to identify the most effective ways to grow a business. It typically involves a combination of marketing, analytics, and product development techniques to acquire and retain customers. But growth hacking doesn’t establish early-stage companies for long-term success. It might be tempting to dive right into marketing activities with a growth-hacking mindset but marketing is not just about the now. Taking a sustainable approach to growth marketing is what will set you up for success in the long term.
What is Sustainable Growth Marketing?
Unlike growth hacking, sustainable growth marketing is a marketing strategy that prioritizes long-term growth and sustainability over short-term gains. It’s a holistic approach to marketing that factors long-term success into the equation through a combination of multiple tactics that can grow and change along with your business.
Why is Sustainable Growth Marketing Important for Early Stage Companies?
Marketing at any stage of growth can be challenging. Budgets are small and resources are scarce, but this is exactly why a sustainable approach to marketing can yield real and long-term results. Instead of focusing on one or two tactics and burning through resources to test a hypothesis, sustainable growth marketing builds foundational marketing elements along with micro efforts that allow for testing and optimization.
Top 5 Things You Should Know About Sustainable Growth Marketing
Build a marketing operations foundation first. Foundational elements are the ultimate key to success when thinking about sustainable growth. A core component of this is marketing operations. Marketing operations refers to the processes, people, and technology that enable a marketing team to execute campaigns and initiatives effectively. It involves everything from project management, budgeting, and resource allocation to data management, analytics, and reporting. For early-stage businesses building a functional marketing operations program is simple. A good place to start is by outlining the processes for how leads or sales enter the marketing funnel and what happens to them during the process. This will help determine gaps in your current process and a thousand-foot view of the customer journey. Check out this blog from HubSpot for a more in depth guide to building a marketing operations foundation.
A marketing strategy is a must. It’s tempting to skip over the strategy component and get started. But without a clear strategy, it will be not only difficult but practically impossible to track the effectiveness of your programs. Also, marketing strategies help to align stakeholders across the entire business and set expectations. Comprehensive marketing strategies include the following:
Clear goals and KPIs
Target audience analysis
Competitive analysis
Full funnel marketing plan
Budget (at least six months)
Budget over time. Developing a comprehensive six- to twelve-month marketing budget is necessary when creating a sustainable growth plan. What’s important to remember is that every marketing effort doesn’t have to be executed at once. A budget will help manage spend over time and allow for the flexibility to move money into efforts that work as the year progresses. It also holds the team accountable and prevents overspending in areas that may not be effective. Check out our Crowdcast on how to build a budget.
Know your audience and know them well. A sustainable growth marketing strategy requires a deep knowledge of the target audience. When building target audience profiles, it’s important to include the following:
Demographic or firmographic profile
How to reach them
Pain points
How product/service solves their problem
Be thoughtful with messaging. Once audience profiles are built, messaging should fall into place. What’s important to remember is that messaging evolves over time. When things aren’t working, it’s easy to ditch a tactic entirely but it might not be the medium but the messaging. The best way to test messaging and creative is to A/B test. Read more from Meta and LinkedIn on how to run a successful A/B test.
Using the framework above is a great way to get started building a sustainable growth marketing strategy. If you need more help, we’re here! At Fivefoottwo Marketing, we help early stage businesses build and launch sustainable marketing programs. Reach out to laura@fivefoottwomarketing.com for a free 30-minute marketing consultation.